


Knockout

by neversaydie



Series: cock it and pull it [24]
Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Closeted Character, College, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Unresolved Sexual Tension, sammy is stubborn, sammy vs his self esteem, they're both so thirsty for each other and so oblivious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 20:09:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14172486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neversaydie/pseuds/neversaydie
Summary: "They called you a faggot," Sammy admits, quietly, and Jack stops in his tracks and just stares at him, cold shooting through his gut as he hangs frozen with the cotton pad not quite touching the cut over Sammy's eye."Yougot beat up because someone calledmea faggot," he repeats, blankly, and Sammy looks carefully (as careful as he can be when he can hardly see straight) at the wall rather than meet Jack's eyes."I maybe threw the first punch," he mutters, after a long pause.[in which Sammy makes bad but chivalrous drunken decisions, and Jack can't decide if he wants to kiss or kill him.]





	Knockout

**Author's Note:**

> TW: homophobic comments mentioned and aftermath of Sammy getting his ass handed to him shown 
> 
> happy easter and chag sameach kfam!

A three a.m. knock on his door, on the Sunday night before the semester starts back up, is the last thing Jack anticipated after a quiet night in with his textbooks. Lily is visiting their parents, he and Sammy got lunch and had a few beers that afternoon, and he's been in bed for hours by the time the insistent and unexpected knocking summons him.

Well, perhaps the fact that Sammy is bleeding on the other side of the door is the most unexpected thing.

"Jesus Christ," he fumbles the door open in a panic after he gets a look at Sammy through the peephole, and his friend smiles drunkenly with blood between his teeth when they're face to face. Great, he's wasted. "What the hell happened?!"

"I got in a fight," Sammy lets himself be shepherded into the apartment and through to the bathroom, where Jack flips the toilet lid closed and makes him sit down. Sammy's face is worse under bright light in a white room, purple and red and violent, and one bony shoulder is visible through the rip in the neck of his t-shirt.

"Yeah, no shit," all sleepiness completely disappeared in the face of his best friend looking like a zombie movie extra, Jack grabs the first aid kit out of the medicine cabinet and kneels down next to Sammy, wincing at the cold tile on his bare knees. "What the hell happened?"

Sammy just shrugs, because he's a stubborn little shit, and Jack doesn't feel too bad about making him flinch when he grabs his chin to turn his face into the light. One eye is beginning to swell shut, there's a cut sluggishly bleeding above his eyebrow, and it seems like he's hit the pavement or something from the way his bottom lip looks like he's bitten it to bleeding.

Jack sighs and digs out the hydrogen peroxide. This isn't the first time they've gone through this routine.

"I'd hate to see the other guy," he mutters, grabbing a hand towel and wetting it enough so he can clean the blood off his friend's face and see what the real damage is. Sammy is the level of drunk where he's weaving slightly even though he's sitting down, but other than that he sits still and lets Jack work. "Seriously, did you just stay at the bar after I left?"

"I didn't wanna go home," Sammy looks a little better with the dried blood gone, but he's still vaguely the colour of bruised fruit and Jack's pretty sure the purple blooming from under the rip in his shirt isn't from a love bite. "I ran into a couple guys from broadcast history class, so I hung out."

Jack immediately calls bullshit internally, because Sammy's not antisocial but he generally doesn't just _hang out_ with people who aren't the Wright twins, but he doesn't say anything because he wants to find out what the hell really happened.

"So then what?" He sets the towel aside and begins cleaning Sammy up properly, ignoring his gasp of discomfort when Jack pulls his lip down to check the tooth marks. "Don't tell me you were fighting to lose again."

Sammy doesn't normally get into fights, he's generally slightly too anxious and level headed to get violent, but the exception is when he gets into one of his self-destructive spirals. When he's feeling especially bad about himself, his life becomes all liquor and trying to piss off the biggest guy he can find to get his ass handed to him, and it scares Jack half to death because he doesn't understand what drives the bone-deep self-loathing that seems to possess his friend in those low moments.

However, he doesn't think that's what this is… or if it is, then he's seriously overestimated his ability to read Sammy's mood. The guy's been more upbeat lately, settling into his role hosting the university radio station's late night show and apparently feeling better about himself since his friend Eric (who Jack fucking loathes, because he's constantly a dick to Sammy) left on his semester abroad.

If Sammy intentionally got himself beaten up, then Jack should be way more worried than he is right now because it would mean something has rapidly gone very, very wrong.

"I wasn't," Sammy promises, and Jack squints searchingly at him before deciding he's telling the truth. He pours some hydrogen peroxide onto a cotton pad and swipes it carefully over Sammy's lip, squeezing his thigh in apology when he hisses in pain at the sting. The fact he's holding Sammy's thigh to keep him still isn't weird as long as he doesn't think about it too hard… they're just close like that.

"So why are you at my door in the middle of the night looking like you've stepped out of a Romero movie?" Jack fishes out a fresh pad and starts dealing with the cut on Sammy's forehead - was someone wearing a ring? - testing the edges and assessing that it doesn't need a stitch. It might scar, but like hell is he going to try and drag this idiot to an ER right now.

"Someone just made a dumb comment and I got heated. They got heated too and… the rest is history," Sammy makes some kind of dismissive gesture, and Jack notices his knuckles are torn up and starting to bruise as well. At least he gave as good as he got.

"Jesus. What kind of dumb comment is worth getting your ass beat over?" He shakes his head, disbelieving but resigned.

Sammy is definitely the scrappy one in their friendship - both verbally and physically, although he'll always deny it - and Jack has never been a fighter. His parents had been hyper aware of the extra dangers he faced growing up as a queer kid, and hammered the importance of protecting himself and staying out of harm's way into him since he came out at fourteen.

He doesn't know much about Sammy's parents, or his background at all really, but Jack thinks he can safely assume he received the opposite message from whoever was supposed to be looking out for him as a kid. It's part of the reason they work so well together - a little fire and ice balancing each other out on both sides - but it's one of the things Jack struggles to understand about his friend. It would never occur to him to start a physical fight, no matter what the circumstances.

That is, until Sammy comes clean… and everything slides painfully into place.

"We were talking about class and… they called you a faggot," Sammy admits, quietly, and Jack stops in his tracks and just stares at him, cold shooting through his gut as he hangs frozen with the cotton pad not quite touching the cut over Sammy's eye.

" _You_ got beat up because someone called _me_ a faggot," he repeats, blankly, and Sammy looks carefully (as careful as he can be when he can hardly see straight) at the wall rather than meet Jack's eyes.

"I maybe threw the first punch," he mutters, after a long pause.

"Sammy!" Jack throws the bloody cotton into the sink in frustration, and Sammy finally looks at him, drunken determination plastered all over his broken face. Jack is impressed and touched and devastated all at once, knowing his friend's beaten body was born from protection and love and not stupidity. That _he's_ the cause of the bruises, however indirectly. "You can't-"

"Nobody's gonna call you that on my watch, especially not dumb assholes who won't even say it to your face," he enunciates it carefully, with the absolute certainty which only the very intoxicated possess, and Jack realises with the intense eye contact just how close their faces are. Sammy's beer breath is fucking terrible, but somehow he's not moving away. "Never."

"Sammy…" Jack closes his eyes for a second, mainly to stop staring at his friend's bloody mouth long enough to get his thoughts in order. "Please don't do that again. I appreciate you having my back, and defending my honour and shit, but if you got hurt over me then I'd never forgive myself."

"They thought I was gonna laugh along! They can't just-"

"I don't care about being called a fag when I'm not even there to hear it, Sammy. I am one," Jack cuts him off, because his friend is bewildered and well intentioned, but he needs to make this clear. "I care about you getting yourself killed. Don't do that again, man, you're too important to me."

Sammy looks at him levelly and nods, seeming to finally understand despite the fact Jack feels like he's fucked up and said too much. The moment hangs and crystallises between them - a few inches of distance feeling like millimeters and vast plains all at once - and Jack's sleep-soaked imagination could be playing tricks on him, but he swears Sammy almost leans in a fraction of a second before he stands up, trying to rub some feeling back into his knees from where they've been resting on tile.

"You need some ice on that eye," he needs to get out of the room, suddenly, the tension between them thick and sharp and unbearable. He's going to do something they'll both regret if he stays. "You got any other injuries I need to worry about?"

"Honestly, I can't feel shit right now," Sammy grins, alcohol-soaked bravado kicking in, and Jack would smack him if he wasn't sure he'd painfully catch another bruise. "I don't think anything's broken."

"You're staying here tonight, you moron," Jack shakes his head, intending to leave but lingering in the doorway for a moment regardless. Sammy watches him, looking weirdly proud of himself and his stupid decisions, as Jack opens and closes his mouth a couple of times before he settles on what he wants to say. "Thanks. You're still a fucking idiot, but… thanks."

"I'd get my ass kicked for you anytime," Sammy smiles his broken smile, sounding a little more sincere than he'd let himself be sober, and Jack finally makes himself leave before he does something stupid like kiss his straight best friend.

But if Sammy spoons up behind him in bed that night and cuddles up to him like he's a goddamn teddy bear in his sleep… Jack's not going to say anything about it. It's not like Sammy will remember anything in the morning.

Jack probably imagined the sleepy, sloppy kiss pressed to his shoulder through his t-shirt as the light started to turn grey outside, anyway.


End file.
